Let the games begin

After three stints in power, the PPP has nothing to show for itself. The old PPP is nothing more than a shipwreck.

The words marked the moment. And the moment marked the man. In the presence of tens of thousands of adoring men and women, under the shadow of the imposing minarets of his ancestors’ mausoleum, the man became the undisputed leader of his battered, bruised and beaten party.

Let the games begin. Bilawal Bhutto Zardari spoke from his heart. Or rather, read from his heart the text of the emotional speech penned by one of his wordsmiths. These carefully calibrated words contained no new thoughts or ideas; they nurtured no new information and birthed no new sentiments or ideology. Yet, they carried within them a certain potency, a certain oomph hitherto unheard, unseen and unfelt. Yes, this day in that place, we finally grasped the contours of the counter-narrative — we finally glimpsed the emergence of the storyline that may delegitimise the deadly logic of terrorists and their do-nothing apologists.

Sounds too grand? Perhaps. Bilawal is still wet behind the ears. His party is drowning in scorn. PPP grandees have been exposed for the pygmies they are: venal, corrupt, visionless and incompetent. His grandfather built a juggernaut, his mother nourished it into a mega-force, but now six years and multiple self-wounds later, the party is a mere shell — rotting from inside and rusting from the outside. Once the only truly national political force, it today is a withered and shrivelled regional entity mocking its own being.

And here’s the unkindest cut of all: in today’s national discourse, the PPP is irrelevant. It does not count. It’s voice has no weight. Nobody cares what it says or — mostly — does not say. This is a shocking fall for a force which for decades defined the parameters of debate; a party which stood like a rock against the relentless pounding of the establishment only to stand up and fight again.

But not anymore. After three stints in power, the PPP has nothing to show for itself. The politics of martyrdom has run out of steam. The old PPP is nothing more than a shipwreck, without any treasure inside. If ever there was a time to salvage this wreckage and raise the Titanic; if ever there was a time to reinvent this sagging hulk and inject it with steroids — it is now.

This is precisely why the moment made the man. The moment to stand up and be counted; the moment to shun ambiguity, doublespeak and hypocrisy; and the moment to shed greys and don blacks or whites. And yes, the moment to call a terrorist a terrorist. In the battle for ideas, this is indeed a step in the right direction. Belated? Absolutely. Enough? Absolutely not. Sufficient to chart a new course for the beleaguered party? Never.

So, how do we then weigh the importance of what young Bilawal said from that protected rostrum? How do we take stock of his words and emotions; how do we separate the manufactured brand that he is from the real person that hides under the layers of legacy? The answer lurks somewhere deep inside him, hesitant to emerge from within the folds for fear of being torn asunder by its ferociously ambivalent contradictions. Who was that we saw on that rostrum — the manufactured brand fresh off the legacy assembly line, or a young man coming into his own? For now, it is hard to tell.

What is not hard to tell is the yawning vacuum at the core of our political discourse; a vacuum created by the electoral annihilation of the non-Right parties. Non-Right because there is no true Left; or even no true Centre-Left parties left in the arena. Political mongrels stalk the land. Bilawal and the ruin that he calls his party can do little at this stage. They had their innings and they blew it. When action was needed, they fought with words. When courage was needed, they fought with compromises. When clarity was needed, they fought with confusion. And when efficiency was needed, they fought with glorious incompetence.

Now the most Bilawal can do is to draw clear lines between appeasement and resolve, because this nation desperately needs a narrative that readies it for what lies ahead in the existential fight for the soul of Pakistan.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 29^th, 2013.

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